1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for starting a switching system provided with an exchange having at least a program holding unit in which various programs are held, a call processor, and a switch module controlled by the call processor and with a line concentration group provided between it and a plurality of subscribers' telephone sets accommodated in the exchange, the line concentration group including a line concentrator and a line processor which controls the line concentrator based on a call processing program.
2. Description of the Related Art
As a form of a general switching system, there is one which includes a line concentrator inserted between a switch module and subscribers' telephone sets. An exchange is formed by the switch module together with a call a processor which controls the switch module. A line concentration group is formed with a line processor which controls a line concentrator. Therefore, the exchange and line concentration group operate independently based on their own unique call processing programs.
To start up (set up) such a switching system, it is necessary to start up not only the exchange, but also the line concentration group. The present invention refers to the starting up of the latter line concentration group in particular among the two.
Taking a look at the start up (set up) of a general switching system, as explained in detail later, the starting up at a main office including the exchange is achieved by performing an initial program load (IPL) from, for example, the magnetic tape (MT) of a program holding unit through a common bus to a main memory of the call processor.
However, in a remote office including the line concentration group, located outside of the main office, such an IPL operation cannot be performed for the startup. The reason is that the remote office generally is not provided with the above-mentioned MT, etc. due to efforts to reduce costs, achieve greater compactness, etc.
Therefore, particularly when performing the startup of the line concentration group in a remote office, the general practice has been to manually bring in from the main office the read only memory (ROM) in which the predetermined call processing program has been loaded and insert the ROM into the proper device for IPL.
This form of IPL, however, requires manual work and numerous work hours. The more the number of remote offices, further, the greater the costs of the parts. This problem becomes more serious the greater the number of remote offices and the further they are from the main office. Because the starting up spoken of here includes not only the very first starting up of the system, but also starting up after shutdown due to abnormal operation in the remote offices, so the number of startups is large.